


coming to terms with this

by itsbee



Category: Mortal Instruments Series - Cassandra Clare
Genre: M/M, Malec, the result of me being sad about magnus's immortality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-05
Updated: 2016-07-05
Packaged: 2018-07-21 17:12:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7396327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/itsbee/pseuds/itsbee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Soon he would scuff out and the smoke would linger for a while but eventually it would be gone.</p><p>It took Alec Lightwood a very long time to come to terms with this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	coming to terms with this

**Author's Note:**

> I never have inspiration to finish anything but I finished this, which is like the second thing I've been able to complete in a year. It's basically just me thinkin on Magnus's immortality which makes me real sad but it ended happy I guess?? Happier than my original ending anyway :-)

It took Alec Lightwood a very long time to come to terms with his dysfunctional relationship. It took Alec Lightwood a very long time to come to terms with the fact that Magnus Bane was the candle that lit up his entire future. It took Alec Lightwood a very long time to come to terms with the fact that he was a candle that would light the next fifty years of Magnus Bane’s future at best.

Soon he would scuff out and the smoke would linger for a while but eventually it would be gone.

It took Alec Lightwood a very long time to come to terms with this.

Sometimes he wasn’t sure who this news was harder on. Alec didn’t think he would be able to bear it if the roles were reversed. If he had to watch the person he loved slowly wither away into nothing while he lived on. If he had to watch Magnus, overcome with the diseases of old age, his candle burning out too quickly and too slowly all at once.

It would be hard for Magnus, sure, but then Alec’s train of thought disobeyed him and wandered to places he willed it not to go. How long would it take for him to be a distant memory? In five hundred years, would Alec be the obscured image of a boy with dull blue eyes and inky hair that Magnus loved once upon a time? He was the first person Magnus ever married and the first person Magnus ever had children with, but was it enough to leave a lasting imprint on his brain and on his heart? When Alec and Rafe were gone and Max and Magnus were left alone, how long would their memory carry on? Five hundred years was an awful long time.

 It hurt worse than any demon sting.

But Alec had already come to terms with this. He had, he swore he had.

He had.

He _had_.

 

He hadn’t.

 

Alec stared at himself in the mirror. It framed his face on the wall of their bedroom like a golden halo, interwoven with complex designs that Alec didn’t really care about. He was preoccupied with caring about something else, although he begged his mind not to. He was twenty nine. In a few months he would be thirty. Probably half of his life gone, and that was if he was lucky. Shadowhunters didn’t always live very long.

His face was noticeably different from when he had met Magnus at the ripe young age of eighteen. He looked much older, more mature. He liked to think that he seemed wiser, too. In fact, he didn’t think that he aged badly at all. It was just that, standing next to Magnus, whose appearance was eternally nineteen, he felt awkward. And it was stupid that he felt that way because Magnus was still centuries his elder, but something very immature yet still very pressing in Alec thought that it was unfair that he had to grow and age while Magnus would continue to look like a teenager when he was a thousand years old.

Alec didn’t want Magnus to have to see him at fifty. He didn’t want Magnus to have to see him wither away.

Sometimes Alec thought about what it would be like if he were just to die now. To throw himself onto a demon during a mission. He would never actually do it, there was too much he cared about, but he wondered. Wondered if it would be better for Magnus to preserve the young and lively image of Alec rather than the frail and broken version at age sixty, seventy, eighty.

Alec was really trying to come to terms with this.

“I’m getting rid of this mirror,” a voice hissed in his ear.

Alec jumped and spun around. Magnus was there, his unwavering nineteen-year-old face looking slightly agitated but mostly sad. “I hate it when you do that,” he said.

“Do what?” Alec raised an arched black eyebrow.

“Think about the future.”

Alec sighed. There was no point in lying. He wasn’t sure he could ever come to terms with this. “Just because you don’t think about the future doesn’t mean it won’t happen.”

Magnus almost laughed, because he of all people understood that the most. “The future is coming whether or not you think about it. Stop torturing yourself.” As if as a side note, he added, “And me. When you think about it, I think about it. And, frankly, I would prefer not to think about it.”

Well, he was as bluntly honest as he always was.

“I can’t help it,” Alec said, diverting his eyes. His mouth felt like cotton. He hated that he was always the one who sparked up this conversation.

Magnus rested his palms on either of Alec’s cheeks. His hands were warm and comforting and felt so much like home that Alec brought his eyes back up to look at the warlock’s. No matter what, Magnus would always be taller. “It’s okay,” was all he said.

“I’m sorry,” Alec whispered, leaning forward to fit his head into the crook of Magnus’s neck.

“We’ll figure it out.”

“I’m scared.”

Magnus’s pulse jumped. It beat rhythmically three, four, five times before he said anything.

“Me, too.” Then, quickly: “We’ll figure it out. I promise. I won't lose this.”

 

Alec willed his candle to burn a little brighter.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> I was gonna end this five hundred years in the future but I was too lazy tbh. Thanks for reading me basically word vomiting my feelings and projecting my sadness onto Alec !!!


End file.
